My Toxic Baby

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My Toxic Baby

A film by Min Sook Lee

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SYNOPSIS

This eye-opening, often amusing documentary by the director of Tiger Spirit, winner of Canada’s prestigious Donald Brittain Gemini Award, records the filmmaker’s quest for safe, sane and affordable ways to raise her child in a world embedded with toxic threats and still lead a normal life. Although new mother Min Sook Lee breast fed her daughter from birth, she used baby bottles too, only to discover that they leached a chemical byproduct linked to impaired health and serious diseases. This set in motion a journey that exposes hidden dangers in infant bath soaps, diaper rash creams, teething toys and many everyday products from an industry largely unregulated by law. For Lee, it also uncovers risks posed by our own homes and chemical contaminants we carry within our own bodies.

Her search introduces us to others, including nursing mothers and parents helping to build youngsters’ natural immune systems, who are seeking alternative choices themselves and finding healthier, environment-friendly ways to rear their children. A personal essay that packs a punch, MY TOXIC BABY throws a spotlight on non-hazardous options that are available in our chemically saturated world, and further emphasizes women’s particular concerns about environmental hazards and health.

PRESS

“…ideal for facilitating discussions about work-life balance, anxiety around motherhood, and classic feminist debates about nature and culture.”

Erin Marie Arizzi Films for the Feminist Classroom

“A great resource for raising awareness about some of the most pressing environmental health issues we face today.”

Danielle Roth-Johnson Visiting Asst. Professor of Women’s Studies, University of Nevada-Las Vegas

“A potent and inspiring film for everyone…[It] will open your eyes to the toxic world around you."

Tatyanna Wright Writer, Maternity Lifestyle Expert & Founder, Haute Mama

“What separates [this film] from the herd is its uncommonly intimate, personal dimension — which does not preclude its pointing towards wider implications.”

Adam Nayman Metro News Canada

“[A] realistic investigation of the various "alternative" parenting options: [Lee] dares to consider the costs involved and whether it would be practical for her to implement them with her own family.”

Chandra Menard www.blogto.com

“BPA. Lead. Melamine. [An] intimate and alarming look at the numerous toxins found in a baby’s products and environment. Urgent, emotional and highly personal.”

Toronto International Film Festival

"Attention grabbing...recommended."

EMRO

“Min Sook Lee's Toxic Baby is a nuanced and thoughtful look at how overwhelming the world can suddenly loom when you're pregnant or gazing at your tiny, growing baby. She chronicles -- with both horror and wry humor -- her own awakening to the unsafe environment surrounding her daughter: the neurotoxins, hormone disruptors, and carcinogens that lurk everywhere from toys to breast milk and infant formula, food, crib mattresses, and kitchen cabinet paint. She places her own journey into context by creating compelling portraits of some of the quirkier and more thought provoking denizens of the eco-community. It's her ability to assimilate these different perspectives and to balance and act on what she learns that makes Toxic Baby a wonderful and personal introduction to the common sense world of 'green parenting.'”

Alexandra Zissu The Conscious Kitchen (2010), The Complete Organic Pregnancy (2006)

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

Toronto International Film Festival
Anchorage International Film Festival
Guelph Festival of Moving Image

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Min Sook Lee

Min Sook Lee is an award winning filmmaker. She is the co-creator of the hit comedy series SHE’S THE MAYOR which premiered on Vision TV in 2011. She has produced and directed numerous critically acclaimed documentaries, including: THE REAL MASH – the true story of the people that inspired the fiction TV series, MY TOXIC BABY – one mother’s journey into the world of toxins in baby products, TIGER SPIRIT – a reunification story shot in North and South Korea (Donald Brittain Gemini Award for Best Social/Political Documentary), HOGTOWN (Best Feature-length Canadian Documentary award at Hot Docs Festival); BADGE OF PRIDE – the story of gay cops in Toronto - and ELCONTRATO – a look at the lives of migrant farm workers in Canada (nominated for the Donald Brittain Gemini ).

Min Sook was also presented with the Cesar E. Chavez Black Eagle Award for El Contrato’s impact on the rights of migrant workers. Min Sook’s films have been broadcast nationally on CBC, Global, TVO and History Television. Her films have traveled to festivals across North America, Europe and Asia. Min Sook has served as a judge and guest speaker for various film organizations including the Toronto International Film Festival, the Hot Docs Don Haig Award, the Imaginative Film Festival, Reel Asian Film Festival, the Reel World Film Festival and the Liaison of Independent Filmmakers of Toronto.

Min Sook is currently in production on the documentary OPERATION GREENUP about an OSS mission comprised of Jewish spies that went behind enemy lines during WWII which will premiere on History Television in 2012. (8/14)

Clips

Clip: Mother and daughter getting tested for toxins Clip: Being green and the eco-elite? Clip: Elimination Communication Clip: XRF Analyzer tests toys for toxins

Subject Areas

Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter

With profound insight and a healthy dose of levity, COMPLAINTS OF A DUTIFUL DAUGHTER chronicles the various stages of a mother's Alzheimer's Disease and the evolution of a daughter's response to the illness. The desire to cure the incurable-to set right her mother's confusion and forgetfulness, to temper her mother's obsessiveness-gives way to an acceptance which is finally liberating for both daughter and mother. Neither depressing nor medical, COMPLAINTS OF A DUTIFUL DAUGHTER is much more than a story about Alzheimer's and family caregiving. It is ultimately a life-affirming exploration of family relations, aging and change, the meaning of memory, and love.

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Mothertime

MOTHERTIME is a personal video diary that takes us on a corporeal journey in parenting via a small portable Go-Pro camera mounted on the filmmaker and her toddler over the period of a year and a half.

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Troop 1500

Their mothers may be convicted thieves, murderers and drug dealers, but the girls of Troop 1500 want to be doctors, social workers and marine biologists. With meetings once a month at Hilltop Prison in Gatesville, Texas, this innovative Girl Scout program brings daughters together with their inmate mothers, offering them a chance to rebuild their broken relationships. Intimately involved with the troop for several years, the directors took their cameras far beyond meetings to explore the painful context of broken families. Powerful insight comes from interviews shot by the girls themselves, which reveal their conflicted feelings of anger and joy, abandonment and intimacy—as well as the deep influence their mothers still have on them. An estimated 1.5 million children have incarcerated parents and 90 percent of female inmates are single parents. Their daughters are six times more likely to land in the juvenile justice system. TROOP 1500 poignantly reveals how an inspired yet controversial effort by the more than 90-year old Girl Scouts organization is working to help these at-risk young girls deal with their unique circumstances and break the cycle of crime within families.

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Latching On

After filmmaker Katja Esson’s sister gave birth in Germany, she was able to breastfeed her baby anywhere and at any time. Returning home to New York, Esson found that breastfeeding was rarely practiced and largely unseen. Academy Award® Nominee Esson (Ferry Tales) turned her quirky eye on the subject and set out to learn why this was so. Her wide-ranging, frequently funny documentary highlights the intersecting economic, social, and cultural forces that have helped replace mother’s milk with formula produced by a billion dollar industry, and reveals the challenges and rewards for women who buck the trend. Latching On draws on lively first-hand accounts from mothers of diverse ethnicities and economic backgrounds, as well as candid observations by pediatricians, healthcare providers, lactation specialists, and the proprietor of New York’s first breastfeeding boutique. Including data about paid maternity leave, hospital post-delivery policies, and workplace accommodations for nursing mothers, the film compares current US practices with standards adopted elsewhere. Tensions around public breastfeeding and "breast is best" promotion campaigns highlight society's perceived interest in regulating women's reproductive behavior, as well as the power of culture to assign sexual and moral meaning to mothers' bodies. Entertaining and insightful, Latching On is an important analysis of the politics of breastfeeding, illuminating the complexities behind a simple, natural act.

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Mothers of Bedford

Women are the fastest-growing U.S. prison population today. Eighty percent are mothers of school-age children. Jenifer McShane's absorbing documentary gives human dimensions to these rarely reported statistics, taking us inside Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison north of New York City. Shot over four years, MOTHERS OF BEDFORD follows five women - of diverse backgrounds and incarcerated for different reasons- in dual struggles to be engaged in their children's lives and become their better selves. It shows how long-term sentences affect mother-child relationships and how Bedford's innovative Children's Center helps women maintain and improve bonds with children and adult relatives awaiting their return. Whether it be parenting's normal frustrations to celebrating a special day, from both inside and out of the prison walls, this moving film provides unprecedented access to a little known, rarely shown, community of women.

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The Motherhood Archives

Archival montage, science fiction and an homage to 1970s feminist filmmaking are woven together to form this haunting and lyrical essay film excavating hidden histories of childbirth in the twentieth century. After several years of buying films online and working in historical archives, award-winning filmmaker Irene Lusztig amassed an unusual and fascinating collection of found footage aimed at teaching women how to be pregnant, give birth, and look after babies, along with training films for obstetricians and health care professionals, and a handful of home movies. Assembling her extraordinary trove from over 100 different sources, including newly rediscovered Soviet and French childbirth material tracing the evolution of Lamaze, THE MOTHERHOOD ARCHIVES inventively untangles the complex, sometimes surprising genealogies of maternal education. This extraordinary achievement illuminates our changing narratives of maternal success and failure while raising important questions about our social and historical constructions of motherhood.

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Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth

FEED THE GREEN: FEMINIST VOICES FOR THE EARTH challenges the cultural imagination surrounding the destruction of the environment and its impact on femicide and genocide. This informative documentary, by Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies professor and scholar Jane Caputi, highlights an active global resistance movement and an alternative imagery communicating resistant green consciousness. FEED THE GREEN features a variety of feminist thinkers, including ecological and social justice advocates Vandana Shiva, Starhawk and Andrea Smith, ecosexual activists Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens; ecofeminist theorist and disability rights activist Ynestra King, poet Camille Dungy, scholars and bloggers Janell Hobson and Jill Schneiderman and grass roots activist La Loba Loca. Their voices are powerfully juxtaposed with images from popular culture, including advertising, myth, art, and the news, pointing to the ways that an environmentally destructive worldview is embedded in popular discourses, both contemporary and historical. Discussions include the parallels between men’s violence against women and violence against Earth, the disastrous and continuing impacts of European colonization, and the ways that the ill effects of environmental damage are felt disproportionately by those who face racial and socioeconomic inequalities. Required viewing for Women’s and Environmental Studies as well as Pop Culture.

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Footprint: Population, Consumption and Sustainability

FOOTPRINT takes a dizzying spin around the globe, witnessing population explosions, overconsumption, limited resources, and expert testimony as to what a world straining at its limits can sustain. We spend time with indigenous health workers, activists, and the ordinary people in the Philippines, Mexico, Pakistan and Kenya, women who all challenge the idea that our world can continue to support the weight of humanity’s footprint on it. FOOTPRINT offers unprecedented access to the people on the ground who are all in their unique way challenging the status quo and making us rethink what’s really at stake. There are surprising revelations on who are the players standing in the way of solutions and those pushing for it, without losing sight of the array of possible solutions that open up when we take the time to ask this critical question of how many of us there are in the world and what the Earth can sustain if we are to all live a dignified life.

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OUR CATALOG

My Toxic Baby

SYNOPSIS

PRESS

SCREENING HIGHLIGHTS AND AWARDS

ABOUT FILMMAKER(S)

Clips

Subject Areas

RELATED LINKS

YOU MIGHT ALSO BE INTERESTED IN

Complaints of a Dutiful Daughter

Mothertime

Troop 1500

Latching On

Mothers of Bedford

The Motherhood Archives

Feed the Green: Feminist Voices for the Earth

Footprint: Population, Consumption and Sustainability